PhotoVoice: Collective, participatory community assessments and advocacy following the Great East Japan Disasters

This paper discusses the processes and findings of a multi-site PhotoVoice project following the Great East Japan Disasters of March 2011.  This participatory action research project—collaboration between local women’s organizations and university-based researchers—is aimed at strengthening gender-informed disaster policies and response by engaging the very women affected by the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accidents in the analyses of their life conditions and advocacy efforts.  Since June 2011, a diverse group of women (n=42) in six localities in the most disaster-affected areas of northern Japan have taken photographs of their lives and participated in ongoing discussion group meetings.  Repeated discussions of their own and other members’ experiences with the disasters have often led to the identification of underlying sociocultural and political factors that produce commonalities and differences across individual experiences.  Facilitated group discussions also have served as a collective space for grieving the loss and rebuilding their lives.

Analyses of photographs and group discussions elucidate how individuals make sense of, and respond to, natural and technological disasters; how individual experiences are influenced by community, sociocultural, and structural forces; and how they formulate and take action individually and collectively.  Increasingly, participants have become interested in speaking out and strengthening disaster preparedness and response and reconstruction efforts, reflecting the processes of politicalization and conscientization/conscientização (Freire, 1970).  Findings of the project suggest that participatory action research, such as PhotoVoice, could not only be conducive to collective community assessments but also promote participants’ reflection, wellbeing, growth, and social action.